Thoughts of a lifelong fan: Hopefully a good display at Swansea will regenerate Crawley Town's confidence

I know what you’re thinking, that I had bought them before the two defeats against Grimsby and Newport County, but that would only be true about the Swansea game. I watched the Newport game in incredulity, wondering how we hadn’t gone into the half time break at least two goals ahead and then saw us commit two terrible defensive errors in the space of two minutes to put us two goals down and out of the game.

We did pull a goal back in the 6th minute of added on time through Max Anderson, on as a late substitute, but in the slightly off the mark words of Scott Lindsey, in his after-match interview, “You can’t win the lottery if you haven’t bought a ticket”. Off the mark only because, in my opinion, we bought plenty of tickets but then proceeded to throw them straight in the bin because of our poor finishing. Every statistic, bar the one that really matters, was in our favour and Scott clearly knows things need addressing and quickly.

Harry Forster, Dion Perreira, Danny Cashman and Ben Radcliffe are all out injured and, according to Scott, will not make the squad this Tuesday for our visit to Swansea, but I do feel that Anderson, Jack Roles, Louis Flower, Louie Watson etc need to have been given a chance in this game to show what they can do. On top of those players, one of Jojo Wollacott or newly signed Will Heater should be in the match day squad (if fit) as if Harvey Davies was to get injured the only course of action open to us would be to put an outfield player between the sticks.

Anyway, that’s Mr. Optimistic giving his opinion and hoping that by the time you read this in print we will have beaten Swansea City and will be looking for our first league points of the season at Crewe Alexandra.

Swansea went down by one goal to nil on Saturday away at Middlesbrough but will no doubt provide a stern test for us. They narrowly beat us back in 2012 by three goals to two, when they were in the Premier League and we were in League 1. Spanish international, Michu, opened the scoring for them at the Broadfield but goals from Josh Simpson and Hope Akpan had us dreaming of reaching the 4th round of the league cup, until Danny Graham equalised for them and Gary Monk scored an undeserved winner in 90th minute.

Hopefully a good performance against the Swans will regenerate our confidence before we take on top of the table, Crewe Alexandra, on August 16th and 6th in the table MK Dons on August 19th at the Broadfield Stadium. Just in case you may have forgotten what happened the last time we faced these two clubs, back in May 2024, why not pay a visit to Crawley Museum on Wednesday, August 13 through Friday, August 15 where you can relive the events of a wonderful time in the history of our club. (The actual exhibition ends on Saturday, August 16, but hey, you’ll all be in Crewe watching us gain our first league win of the season.)